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VII.
(Postal card postmarked Camden, September 11, 1883, and
addressed to Karl Knortz, cor Morris Avenue & 155th Street, New
York City)
Dr. Knortz was a German-American scholar who translated many American writers for German-speaking audiences. A large part of Whitman's correspondence with him is printed in Horst Frenz's "Walt Whitman's Letters to Karl eaking audiences. A large part of Whitman's correspondence with him is printed in Horst Frenz's "Walt Whitman's Letters to Karl Knortz" in the May, 1948, American Literature (XX, 155-163). Mr Frenz derived his texts from the appendix of Knortz's monograph on Whitman. The original manuscripts for the following letters printed by Frenz are in the Barrett collection: November 14, 1882; November 15, 1882; June 19, 1883; January 10, 1884; April 27, 1885; June 14, 1886 (for which there are important additions, see below); March 24, 1887; May 3, 1887; September 10, 1888; January 8, 1889; and February 14, 1889. They differ in no important details from Mr. Frenz's transcription except that he occasionally spells out some of Whitman's elisions in full and in the letter of November 14, 1882, transposes a postscript into the main body of the letter. There are also included in the Barrett collection this letter of September 11, 1883 and one for June 14, 1887, for which see below.
Knortz was for several years pastor of the German Independent Protestant Congregation in Johnstown, Pa. In 1882 he moved to New York to do free lance editorial work. Although by this time there were several people translating Whitman into German, it seems likely that Whitman was referring here to Ferdinand Freiligrath who made the first translations in an essay in Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung for April 24, 1868. Dr. R. M. Bucke's book was his Walt Whitman, published in Philadelphia in 1883.
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